A Look at David Rockefeller’s Real Estate Gifts

The philanthropist died on Monday at 101

To celebrate his 100th birthday in 2015, David Rockefeller, the last living grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, donated 1,000 acres of land in Seal Harbor, Maine, to the Mount Desert Land and Garden Preserve.

It was a generous gift but just a small reminder of the generations of philanthropy from a family that bought and donated swaths of land for conservation, funded construction and preservation projects, and turned their family estate in the Hudson Valley into a public museum and meeting center.

We remember some of the real estate contributions of Mr. Rockefeller, who died Monday morning. He was 101.

Mount Desert Island, Maine:

The Rockefellers were instrumental in helping create Acadia National Park in Hancock County, Maine, where some of the nation’s richest families have summer homes and thousands of Americans vacation each year.

Mr. Rockefeller’s father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., sponsored the construction of many miles of carriage roads to help visitors better access the island and built more than a dozen stone bridges across the island between 1913 and 1940, according to the park’s brochure. When fire swept across the island in 1947, the family hired a crew to help pick up after the wreckage.

In 2015, a few days before he turned 100, David Rockefeller gifted more than 1,000 acres of his land, including Little Long Pond, streams, hiking trails and woodlands, to a public charity that maintains Mount Desert Island.

“This magnificent state and its wonderful residents have been such an integral part of my family’s history. It is my hope that the public should forever benefit from this beloved tract of land,” Mr. Rockefeller, who had vacationed on the home since his birth, said when he announced the donation.

Much of the family’s estate in Westchester was gifted over the years to New York State. The Rockefellers donated the Rockefeller State Park Preserve piece by piece starting in 1983, growing to include a 1.6-mile hiking trail, an art gallery, a swan lake, the Old Croton Aqueduct, a peony museum and the 204-room mansion of William Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller’s brother, who died in 1922.

The family even opened for public tour “Kykuit,” a six-story family home to four generations of Rockefellers in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The public can tour the main rooms of the 100-year-old home and the gardens, which contain the sculpture garden of former New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller (David Rockefeller’s older brother) and underground art galleries. The collection includes works by Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore and Alexander Calder.

They’ve also preserved a large coach barn with a collection of classic cars and horse-drawn carriages, according the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Stone BarnsNeilson Barnard / Getty Images

In 2003, David Rockefeller, a longtime CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank, donated an 80-acre farm in Pocantico Hills in Westchester to the Stone Barn Restoration Corporation. Today, the property is a working farm that is open to the public as an education center. It also boasts a notable restaurant on the premises, Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

It was at his Pocantico Hills estate nearby where David Rockefeller died.

New York, New York

An honorary chairman of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, David Rockefeller continued the family tradition of support.

David’s mother, Abigail, was one of three New York women who drove MoMA’s establishment and subsequent move to its Bauhaus-inspired home today on West 53rd Street. In the 1950s, he employed noted architect Philip Johnson to construct a sculpture garden named after his mother, according to a book on the garden by John Elderfield.

He also donated $77 million cash to a capital campaign that helped the museum more than double in size in the early 2000s, an expansion of nearly 630,000 square feet. He also pledged the museum’s single largest donation of $100 million in 2005, according to an article in The New York Times at the time.

It’s also expected that a large number of works from his private collection will be gifted to the museum now that he’s passed, according to Forbes.

Susan Rockefeller, David Rockefeller Sr., and Ariana Rockefeller attend the 2016 Museum of Modern Art Party in the Garden at Museum of Modern Art. Neilson Barnard / Getty Images

The Rockefeller family contributions in Manhattan also include the donation of the land where the United Nations headquarters now stand.

Aside from these, David Rockefeller had also given many millions for the preservation of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.

Michael Quattrone, one of David’s 10 grandchildren and board chair of the David Rockefeller Fund, said in a statement about his passing that his grandfather taught his family about the importance of philanthropy and generosity.

“He embodied the values of reverence for the Earth, stewardship of the arts, and service to humanity,’ Mr. Quattrone said. "He taught us to leave the world a better place than we found it through hard work, strong and diverse relationships, and generosity.”